Explorers

National Geographic/Buffett Awards

Enriqueta Velarde

Awards for Leadership in Conservation

The annual National Geographic Society/Buffett Awards for Leadership in Conservation were established by the Society and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to recognize and celebrate unsung heroes working in the field. Awardees have demonstrated outstanding leadership in managing and protecting the natural resources in their countries and regions. They are each inspirational conservation advocates, who serve as role models and mentors. There are two awards presented each year: Africa (established in 2002) and Latin America (established in 2005).

The awardees are chosen from nominations submitted to the Committee for Research and Exploration, which screens them through a peer-review process. Each year’s recipients are honored at a ceremony in Washington D.C. and receive a one-time grant of $25,000 to support their ongoing work.

Howard Buffett is president of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which focuses on humanitarian and conservation issues. An agriculturalist, businessman, and widely published photographer, Buffett is also a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates, serves as a United Nations Ambassador Against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Program and is a member of National Geographic's Council of Advisors.

Howard G. Buffett

"The individuals that hold the front line for conservation often go unrecognized while making great personal sacrifices. This award was established to motivate and support these great conservationists." -Howard G. Buffett

2014 Buffett Awardees

Enriqueta Velarde’s work focuses on seabird ecology. She has visited Isla Rasa every spring for the past 35 years to measure, weigh, census, band, and observe the seabirds. Year after year, she has followed the survival of the banded birds, estimated their breeding effort and success, quantified their diet, and recorded behavioral patterns.

2013 Buffett Awardees

Dr. Alberto Yanosky, leader of an environmental organization in Paraguay that works to safeguard habitats and species across the country, and Charles Tumwesigye, chief of conservation area management in the Uganda Wildlife Authority, have been selected as the 2013 winners of the National Geographic Society/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation.

2012 Buffett Awardees

The creator of a grassroots environmental movement in Mexico and a forestry/agroforestry conservationist in Cameroon won the National Geographic Society/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation in 2012.

2011 Buffett Awardees

Moi Vicente Enomenga Mantohue was born near Coca in the Ecuadorian Amazon just as his family and the Huaorani were first contacted by American missionaries. Some of the clans cultivated this contact, but Enomenga’s father decided to find a place that was isolated, where he could continue to hunt, fish, work on his land, and see his children learn about traditional life in the forest.

2010 Buffett Awardees

Vitor O. Becker was born to a family of small farmers in the town of Brusque in southern Brazil. He had an early love of nature and insects, and studied agronomy and forestry, receiving his Ph.D. in entomology. Becker focused on the study of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), becoming an expert on the subject. Clemira Souza, a schoolteacher, met Becker in 1968, when he was working at the Instituto Biológico in São Paulo. They married the following year.

John Makombo was born and raised in western Uganda. At an early age he developed a passion for conservation. He studied environmental science at university before joining the Ugandan Wildlife Authority. Starting as park warden, Makombo has steadily climbed the ranks and is now Chief Conservation Area Manager for all of the protected areas and wildlife reserves in Uganda.

2008 Buffett Awardees

Fatima Jibrell, one of Somalia’s preeminent environmental activists, is the founder of Horn Relief, an African-led nonprofit organization established in 1991 in response to Somalia’s devastating humanitarian crisis and civil war. The organization mobilizes local and international resources to protect the fragile pastoral environment in Somalia.

Brazilian conservationist Denise Rambaldi is executive director of the Golden Lion Tamarin Association. She has achieved remarkable success in pulling back from the brink of extinction this highly endangered primate species that lives in the Atlantic Forest, one of the world’s most critically endangered biodiversity hotspots.

2007 Buffett Awardees

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Jorge Orejuela has been an educator and conservationist in Colombia. He is currently the director of the Cali Botanical Garden and a professor in the environmental sciences department at the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, but his work extends throughout the neo-tropics. Trained as an ornithologist, his research includes species as varied as orchids, spectacled bears, and bats.

Inogwabini Bila-Isia is based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he works for World Wildlife Fund as the Lac Tumba project manager. He conducts field research, helps local groups with natural resource management, and is working on a long-term biodiversity conservation program.

2006 Buffett Awardees

Dr. Jaime Incer is regarded by many as the founder and leading figure of conservation efforts in Nicaragua. Over a distinguished career in academia and government and nongovernmental organizations, Incer has developed curricula and schools in the natural sciences, established national parks and other protected areas, and inspired a new generation of conservationists and life scientists in Nicaragua and throughout Central America

For over 40 years Zephaniah Phiri Maseko has lived, farmed, and raised a family in one of the most arid and resource-poor lands in southern Africa, Zimbabwe’s Zvishavane District. Through his own ingenuity and despite political challenges, he has devised and propagated irrigation practices that have enabled subsistence farmers on marginal lands to prosper as they conserve scarce resources and practice sustainable farming.